FWIW, ls in Research-V6 back in 1975 had 10 options. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Research-V6-Snapshot-Development/usr/source/s1/ls.c ht

FWIW, ls in Research-V6 back in 1975 had 10 options. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Research-V6-Snapshot-Development/usr/source/s1/ls.c https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... By BSD 3 in 1980 it had 11 options. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-3-Snapshot-Development/usr/src/cmd/ls/ls.c https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-3-S... The thing is, we can see even from the 1970s 'ls' how the Unix model doesn't meet the goal "to chain these simple programs together to create complex behaviors". There is no option to escape or NUL terminate a filename, making it possible to construct a filename containing a newline which makes the output look like two file entries. The option for that was added later. There's also the issue that embedded terminal codes will be interpreted by the terminal.